YMMV / Kelly's Heroes

• Awesome Music: The Tiger tank theme, which really helps sell their power, particularly when it kicks into high hear as Tiger 113 is reversing after smashing through a building trying to get to Oddball's Sherman. The theme was reused in Inglourious Basterds.
  • The main theme, "Burning Bridges" by the Mike Curb Congregation.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The Operation Tannenbaum mentioned by the captured German officer was a real operation, albeit one that never went into action: it was a German plan to invade Switzerland.
  • Moriarty describing the "captured" Tiger as a "piece of junk" with "fuel leaking everywhere". Deadly as they could be Tiger tanks were also underpowered, mechanically unreliable unless maintained often and notoriously leaky since wartime shortages meant their fiendishly complicated fuel systems (5 tanks and over 120 tubes and fittings) were made with household plumbing pipes instead of military grade materials.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • One of the assistants working on the film was a young budding filmmaker named John Landis. While in Yugoslavia shooting the movie, Landis witnessed an event involving gypsies burying a corpse in the middle of a road which inspired him to write the script for An American Werewolf in London. He also got to be friendly with Donald Sutherland and years later got him to an appear in two of his early films, The Kentucky Fried Movie and Animal House.
  • One of Oddball's tank crew is Gavin MacLeod, Captain Stubing of The Love Boat.
  • Len Lesser, Jerry's Uncle Leo on Seinfeld, is brought in to the plan by Oddball to build a bridge.
  • Carrol O'Conner is a glory seeking general, shortly before his best known role as Archie Bunker on All in the Family.
  • A roamer is played by Donald Waugh, who would later be best known for playing Hughes in Grange Hill.

---